Help During Hard TimesCentral New York experts in career counseling, job placement and family budgeting share their advice on landing a job, moving up in a career, re-entering the job market or stretching a budget. Find their tips each Monday in MoneyWise in The Post-Standard and here on syracuse.com.A good resume is no guarantee for landing a job. It can, however, land you on the top of the pile for a hiring manager’s consideration.

Your name should be in bold, above your contact information, including an e-mail address. That’s a snap.

Next, and what will take much more time, is a summary or professional profile: a two- to four-line description of your experience and expertise. If done well, this is the “hook” that will make the hiring decision-maker want to read more about you. I find it easiest to craft this profile after writing the rest of the resume.

Give yourself a “budget” of 50 to 70 words, and make sure that each phrase is backed up by details later in the resume.

Punch up content

Use numbers and powerful language (Google "action verbs" for great examples) to describe not your responsibilities, but your accomplishments — how you brought value to your last position.

Instead of “Responsible for training and development,” write “Designed and implemented eight-class training continuum for 200 employees” or “Managed four trainers over 12 months in delivering ISO-9001 readiness sessions to 150 employees.”

Use key words

You’ve found an ad describing a job that excites you? Are there words that make you think, “I’ve done that!”

Get those words — skill descriptions, certifications, degrees, technology expertise — onto your resume. Those words will make your resume more likely to surface to the top of hiring search queries.

Don’t use the same resume over and over. Revise it for each position.

Get used to tweaking your resume, especially for positions that really appeal to you. It’s called target marketing, and your investment of time in research and rewriting will pay off.

Mind the mechanics

Follow these steps:

Keep it tight. No more than two pages, please, unless you want to list items such as publications or patents, in which case make them separate attachments.

More than two pages is equivalent to monopolizing the conversation. Readers’ eyes will glaze over.

Make it readable. Use an 11- or 12-point type font (Arial or Times New Roman are fine), wide margins and bulleted items instead of dense paragraphs of text.

There’s no need to get everything in. Readers don’t want everything. They want to read the document without a magnifying glass. They want to find a hot candidate whose accomplishments match their needs.

Convince them by concisely stating accomplishments.

No mistakes. Typos, grammatical errors and misspellings translate as sloppiness and inattention to detail — hardly the impression a job candidate wants to make.